Time-study watch



Dec. 11', 1923,

L. l. YEOMANS TIME STUDY WATCH Filed June 29 1922 Patented vs. 11, 1923.

UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.-

LUCIEN' I. YEOKANS, OF CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, ASSIGNOB 'IO PIONEER PRODUCTION COK- rm, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, A CORPORATION 01 ILLINOIS.

THE-STUDY WATCH.

Application filed June 29, 1922. Serial No. 571,641.

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, LUCIEN I. YEOMANS, a citizen of the United States, residin in the city of Chicago, in the county of -ook I and State of Illinois, have invented a certain new and useful Time-Study Watch, of which the following is a specification.

The invention relates to watches of the type employed in manufacturing plants for computing the number of productive operations which may be performed in a given length of time, as a basis for determining the cost of production, including the rate to be paid the workmen, locating and eliminating waste, etc.

Time study watches as heretofore constructed have been provided with two hands, one of which, a small hand, is arranged to rotate over a small dial to in- 2 dicate a lapse of time greater than one minute, and the other, a large hand, is arranged to rotate over a large dial to indicate fractional parts of a minute In view of its size, and further in view of the small size of its dial, the small hand must in order to be read, be scrutinized very closely and at best errors in the reading are likely to occur.

The object of the invention is to produce a time study watch of this general character but having the two indicating hands of large size and both readable upon a lar e dial so as to be capable of being quick y and easily read. In carrying out my invention I provide two hands of substantially the same size but differing in appearance, and mount the same upon a common axis so as to rotate in the ratio of ten to one and reading elapsed time directly on the dial in minutes, tenths and hundredths, and

also indicating the production per hour corresponding to any time elapsed from nothing to ten minutes.

In the accompanying drawing I have shown a face view of a watch embodying my invention, a portion of the ring upon the stem being broken away.

Inasmuch as my invention relates to the arrangement of the hands and the various portions of the dial with which they coact, and not to the mechanism which may be employed for actuating and controlling the hands, I deem it uunecesary to illustrate and describe such mechanism herein in detail.

The watch in its preferred form comprises a case 1 enclosing the actuating mechanism (not shown) for a pair of hands 2 and 3 mounted upon a common axis 4. The control.,means preferably includes a stem 5 which is operatively connected with the actuating mechanism in any suitable and well known manner (not shown) so as to enable the return of both hands by pressure upon the stem after the fashion of an ordinary stop watch. 6 designates a pressure member of a take outtime mechanism of usual construction and comprising a brake member (not shown) which is adapted to engage with a portion of the actuating mechanism such, for example, as the balance wheel, to stop the watch.

The case 1 is provided with a dial 7 which as herein shown has an inner circle 8 divided so as to read tenths of a minute according to the red hand; a second circle 9 graduated to read minutes according to the black hand with the graduations on the circles 8 and 9 in radial alinementga third circle 10 containing a computation tablc readable in number of operations per hour, and an outer circle 11 divided so as to -in dicate hundredths of a minute in the case of the hand 2 and tenths of a minute in case of the hand 3. Said hands are operatively connected in any suitable and well known manner so as to operate in a ratio of ten to one. That is to say, the hand 2, is arranged to make a complete revolution in one minute, and the hand 3 to make a complete revolution in ten minutes. Preferably the hands are of substantially the same size so as to be capable of use with any or all of the scales provided by the circles 8 to 11, and in order to facilitate the reading of the device the hands are suitably distinguished, as by employing different colors therefor. Herein the hand 2 is indicated as being colored red and the hand 3 in black. Similarly the figures on the several scales are distinguished by the use of red and black colors. Herein the lightly printed figures indicate red and the heavily printed figures black.

The figures of the inner circle 8 as aforesaid are arranged to indicate tenths of a minute according to the position of the red hand 2. These figures are therefore printed in red. The figures in the circle 9 which are arranged so as to designate minutes when read by the position of the black hand 3, are rinted in black. These figures are prefera 1y located midway between d1- vision points in the scale so as to designate merely the section defined by two g ven d1- vision points, for a purpose which will later ap r. The first section is left blank or u gured so that only nine of the sections are numbered, section one h'avlng a value of something more than one minute and less that two minutes, section 2 a value of at least two minutes, and so on.

The third circle 10 is graduated to lIldlcate the rate of production, that is to say, the total number of operations per hour for any given lapse of time indicated by the hand 2 or by both of the hands 2 and Each of the numbers in the circle 10 is printed partly in black and partly in red and the arrangement is such that when read by the black hand 3 a decimal point is assumed between the black and the red numbers.

The outer circle 11 is simply graduated by suitable lines into one hundred divisions,

and each tenth line is made heavy so as to subdivide this circle into tenths. It will be apparent that the red hand 2 traveling one revolution per minute when read in connection with the scale of the outer circle 11 designates hundredths of a minute, and that the black hand 3 designates tenths of a minute.

In the use of the device, the hands 2 and 3 having been reset to zero by pressure upon the stem 5, let it be assumed that the time required for a single operation is less than one minute. In this event the time elapsed .is indicated by the red hand 2 as is also the computed rate of production, the black hand in the blank or unfigured section of the second circle 9 being entirely disregarded. Thus assuming that the red hand has reached a position, such as that shown in the drawing (the position of the black hand being for present purposes ignored), it is apparent that the time elapsed as shown by the scale of the first circle 8 is somewhat more than eight-tenths of a minute and as indicated by the outer circle 11 is eighty eight one hundredths of a minute. Thus the total time elapsed is .88 of a minute, The figure in the third scale 10 at this point is 68.2 which is the number of operations which may be performed in one hour as computed from the time for one operation.

If now it is assumed that the time required for one operation is more than one minute, then the time is indicated by both the red and black hands, the black hand designating the number of minutes, according to the section in which it isfound, and the red hand indicating tenths and burn dredths of a minute, as in the foregoing example, The rate of hourly production for the time elapsed is indicated by the black hand, which in the instant case is 33.3, a decimal int being assumed between the black an red figures on this table by reason of the fact that the hand 3 points to a figured section of the scale 9, that is to say, one that designates the lapse of at least a full minute.

By the use of a construction and arrangement in time study Watches such that fractional parts of a minute may be read by the use of a large hand, which also designates the rate of production for the time elapsed, the facility with which the watch may be read and hence the convenience and value of the device is greatly increased. Thus it is possible by the use of the particular construction and arrangement herein shown and described, to ascertain quickly and easily the rate of production for any operation re quiring from one hundredth of a minute up to ten minutes. In case the time re quired for one operation is less than one minute, then the rate of production as well as the time is indicated by a single hand or pointer; and in the event that more than one minute is required for each operation, the time may be quickl and accurately read from the two hands a r the fashion of an ordinary watch, and the rate of production noted by reading one hand only.

' Herein I have illustrated and described with particularity a certain embodiment of the invention, but it is contemplated that various changes in the form, construction and arrangement of the parts, and various additions and subtractionstherefrom, may be made by those skilled in the art without departing from the spirit. and scope of the invention as expressed in the appended claims- I claim as my invention:

1. A time study watch having a dial and a pair of hands mounted on a common axis to rotate over the dial, the latter having a plurality of graduated scales thereon indicating the lapse of time and rate of production as determined by the position of one or both of the hands.

2. A time study watch having a dial and a pair of hands mounted on a common axis to rotate over the dial, the latter having a pair of graduated scales for the respectlve hands to indicate time elapsation and a third scale indicating the rate of production as determined by the position of one of said hands.

3. A time study watch having a dial and a pair of hands mounted on a common axis to rotate over the dial, the latter having a plurality of scales divided so as to be read in units of time and fractions thereof, and a groduction scale indicatin the rate of prouction as determined byt 6 position of one out said hands.

4. A time study instrument comprising a dial, a pair of hands mounted on a common axis and arranged to rotate over said dial, said hands being of substantially the same size but distinguished in appearance from each other, said dial having graduations for indicating time elapsation as determined by the position of one or both of said hands, the graduations for the respective hands being correspondingly distinguished, and a computed scale indicating the rate of production over a period of predetermined length as determined by the position of one of said hands.

5. A time study instrument comprising a dial, a pair of hands mounted on a common axis and arranged to rotate over said dial, said hands being of substantially the same size but distinguished in appearance from each other, said dial having graduations for indicating time elapsation as determined by the position of one or both of said hands, the graduations for the respective hands being correspondingly distinguished, and a scale indicating the rate of production over a period of predetermined length as determined by the position of one of said hands, said scale including figures certain of which have distinguishing characteristics corresponding to one of said hands.

6. In a time study watch, a dial, and a pair of hands mounted on a common axis to rotate over the dial in a ratio of ten to one, said dial having a pair of concentric scales one for each of said hands and designating respectively at a given instance, a unit of time and a fraction thereof.

7. In a time study watch, a dial and a pair of hands mounted on a common axis to rotate over the dial, said dial having a pair of concentric scales one for each of said hands and designating respectively a unit of time and a fraction thereof, said scales having their respective sections in radial alinement, said fractional scale having its sections consecutively designated by characters, and the unit scale having its first section undesignated and the remaining sections marked with consecutive characters.

8. A rate computation device comprising a dial having a pair of concentric scales thereon, and an indicator mounted to move over the dial, said scales being respectively adapted to indicate in a given position of the indicator whole units of time and fractions thereof.

9. A rate computation device comprising a dial having a pair of concentric scales thereon, an indicator mounted to move over the dial, said scales being respectively adapted to indicate in a given position of the indicator whole units of time and frac" tions thereof, and means including a third scale for indicating the computed rate for the time elapsed.

10. A rate computation device comprising a dial having a pair of concentric scales thereon, an indicator mounted to move over the dial, said scales being respectively adapted to indicate in a given position of the indicator whole units of time and fractions thereof, and means including a third scale and a second indicator for indicating the computed rate for the time elapsed.

11. A rate computation device comprising a dial having a pair of scales thereon and an indicator mounted to move over the dial. said scales being respectively adapted to indicate in a given position of the indicator whole units of time and fractions thereof, and means including a third scale and a second indicator for indicating the computed rate for the time elapsed, all of said scales being arranged concentrically and said indicators being mounted on a com-- mon axis.

12. A rate computation device comprising a dial having a pair of separate concentrically arranged scales thereon and indicating means adapted to indicate on the respective scales whole units of time and fractions thereof.

13. A rate computation device comprising a dial having a plurality of separate con centrically arranged scales thereon, and indicator means adapted to indicate on the respective scales whole units of time and fractions thereof and also the computed rate of time elapsed.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto aflixed my signature.

LUCIEN I. YEOMANS. 

